Paedo chic is one of the most worrying trends of our time. We seem to be witnessing a surge in the paedophilic sensibility. No, this is not to say that anyone at Balenciaga is a paedophile, or that a parent is a child abuser if he lets his kid hang out with braless ‘transwomen’ at those bacchanalian orgies of self-regard mixed with self-pity that Pride gatherings have become. But it does feel like the paedophilic imagination, the view of children either as sexual beings or as fit for being exposed to sexual beings, is having a resurgence. And we need to talk about that.

We’ve seen the rise of child drag queens. They ‘saunter’, they ‘slay the runway’, they look ‘fierce’, say mainstream media outlets about these young children who adopt the exaggerated sass of adult drag performers. We’ve seen kids attending not only Drag Queen Story Hour events, which are odd but not the end of the world, but also blatantly sexual drag performances. And who can forget the Family Sex Show – three words that really do not belong together – that was due to take place in Norwich earlier this year? It was about sex, featured full-frontal nudity, and was aimed at kids as young as five. Its website encouraged children to google masturbating animals so that they might see how natural it is to have a wank. Online searches for sexual images of beasts? What could go wrong?

You don’t have to be Mary Whitehouse to find this disturbing. To be worried that pop, always loved by the young, has been pornified, with kids singing along to lyrics like ‘chains and whips excite me’ (thanks, Rihanna) or to the dreaded ‘WAP’. To be worried that so many American schoolteachers seem hellbent on teaching their charges that there are a hundred genders and you can be any one of them you want. To be worried by reports about a male Canadian schoolteacher wearing Size Z fake boobs while teaching teenagers or that some sex-ed books in schools contain info about orgies and sex apps. It’s okay to say this isn’t normal. Even – brace yourselves, moral relativists – that it’s bad.